The cake is not a lie in this subway performance

Everyone can have their cake and eat it too. Usually that would take place in a bakery or someone’s home, but thanks to performance artist Bettina Banayan, these passengers are even getting cake on the subway.

Looking to change how people interacted on the subway, even if for just one ride, she entered the subway with a vanilla cake, and once she got settled, she whipped out a container of frosting and got to work. New Yorkers aren’t very personable on the subway, but they couldn’t help but watch Banayan do something that seemed so strange to them.

Many people have trouble reading or even standing upright with the subway’s constant jerky motion, let alone trying to ice a cake—and doing it better than most standing still at the kitchen counter.

And once she put on the finishing touches, everyone in the subway was welcome to a piece.

“We’re constantly in people’s private space, especially on the subway,” she explained to a fellow passenger. “I think it’s important to have some kind of community."

It might not be a choice between cake or death, but with yet another uneventful ride, that’s an easy one.